French UFO files released

France has posted its files from investigations of UFO cases online this week. Within three hours of the launch of the website, the server had crashed because of so much traffic.

This was picked up by a lot of news organizations around the world, because of the obvious novelty of the situation. The possibilities for leads are endless--with hundreds of supposed sightings able to catch the attention of any reader.
The AP picked up this story, releasing two different versions, one on Friday and one from Saturday.

The Friday piece gets to focus on the novelty of the story, using a delayed lead to suck the reader in. They tell of a specific incident that will grab readers attention.

The saucer-shaped object is said to have touched down in the south of France and then zoomed off. It left behind scorch marks and that haunting age-old question: Are we alone in this big universe of ours?

Then they go into discussing the news part of it. It was also interesting of them to note that the website crashed within three hours. This article also uses numbers effectively in the body, giving an impression of how many cases are hoaxes. The numbers do it better than just simply saying, a small number have been explained. They also use numbers to give more examples of incidents, using distances and size to tell the story. The Friday story was also much more in depth, including an interview with the head of the department that these files came from. The ending of this article gave the reader a nugget at the end, for those that stuck around to the end, ending with speculation about life on other planets.

So, do we have neighbors out there, after all?

"I don't have an answer to that," Patenet said. "Even if there is such a planet, given the size of the universe, what is the probability that two civilizations ... will meet or come across each other? I really don't know. It's very complicated. It's incalculable."

The second article was probably a brief written from this larger story. This article, written by Angela Doland, focused much less on the novelty and more on the harder facts of the story, emphasizing the numbers--including how many were solved, how many documents there are. She also doesn't use any of the colorful quotes from the first article even though she paraphrased the director.

In terms of novelty and exciting news writing, the first article was much more fun and interesting to read, but it was harder to pick out the specific facts. The second brief boiled it all down for the busy reader, though losing some of the fun quality.

Comments

is it possible that the massive influx of UFO sightings after world war 2 has direct links to the war itself?

i have often wondered what it would have been like to observe the earth from outer space during 1939-45.

the mass explosions over europe,the hiroshima and nagasaki atom bomb drops.
i am sure it would have been an awesome yet disturbing site.

there is also another factor,communication.

wireless transmissions were the done thing during WW2 and as the war went on the need for newer communication technology's expanded,as did how often it was used,and the reasons why.

the trouble with wireless technology is that no matter how careful you are when sending a transmission,even with todays capabilities, it is impossible to make a wireless transmission travel directly to the recipient
without some of the information being dispersed.

it is inevitable that these signals would be shot out into space like a railgun slug.

and is it possible that these beings had picked up those signals and curiosity got the better of them.
perhaps they could not help but track down and follow the exact signals to our litlle haven of life we like to call earth?

we have all heard of the Foo Fighters,not the band,(who i must say are great)but the fighter pilots of who all admit to seeing and even trying to intercept these 'objects'.they all claim,and i must say rather convincingly that these 'objects' would get within the planes(p38,p51,spitfires,bf109,hurricanes and even mitsubushi zero's) .50 and .30 machine guns range and dart and dodge their fire with lightning speed and accuracy yet they would appear to stay at the same distance no matter which direction they moved as though they were attached to the planes by an invisible wire.

to me such skilled and profeesional human beings would not have to make up story's like that,especially when they emergered from all over the world,from many different pilots who had never even met each other.

now i know i have not quite writen nor chosen my words carefully but these to me are quite possibly two of the most interesting ideas about the mass emergance of ufo sightings after the second world war as before then sightings were very few and far between.

Between me and my husband we've owned more MP3 players over the years than I can count, including Sansas, iRivers, iPods (classic & touch), the Ibiza Rhapsody, etc. But, the last few years I've settled down to one line of players. Why? Because I was happy to discover how well-designed and fun to use the underappreciated (and widely mocked) Zunes are.